Mares Acquires rEvo Rebreathers
News has broken this morning of a major organisational change at the Belgium based rebreather manufacturer.
Paul Raymaekers, CEO of rEvo issued the following statement.
"After more than 10 years of creating, developing and growing rEvo, and knowing that none of my children will or can continue this business, I realised already some time ago that the only way to keep rEvo going, was to look for a partner that had common interests. A strong partner, that was already in the diving business, and had the strength and will to take this work further.
It took months of talking, negotiating, working out synergies, but in the end it became clear that we found the correct ‘modus vivendi’.
As a result, last week the deal was signed and rEvo changed ownership effective 1st July 2016: rEvo BVBA has been acquired for 100% by MARES, one of the world’s leading diving manufacturers.
In order to integrate the two businesses, rEvo will continue to develop and market the Rebreathers, and MARES will support the company
As you know, for a long time, Rebreathers have been a niche in the diving industry and were situated exclusively in the technical diving market. The objective for rEvo partnering up with MARES is to broaden the rebreather community by making rebreathers more accessible while maintaining the quality and performance levels.
This year, MARES released a product line called “Extended Range”, which is developed for recreational divers that want to extend their limits, for example by diving deeper and longer. Next to that, SSI, sister company of MARES, developed a complete range of entirely new open circuit technical training programs in answer to these needs.
In order to integrate the two businesses, rEvo will continue to develop and market the Rebreathers, and MARES will support the company with their research and development teams, manufacturing facilities and their worldwide distribution network.
For the coming years, I will keep managing rEvo, with strong focus on new product developments, and Pieter will keep taking care of the day to day business. As you can imagine, rEvo gets access to a range of new interesting opportunities and resources.
Both rEvo and MARES are driven by innovation and technology. I am convinced that this acquisition will strengthen rEvo’s products and service.
Gerald Skrobanek, MARES President stated “the addition of rEvo is just another example of our continued quest for quality and performance. rEvo will simply strengthen our brand and complete the XR Line and our product offerings.”